Electronic equipment, such as that used in military applications, is often required to be operated in rugged, extreme environmental conditions. Examples of such conditions include excessive moisture, salt, heat, vibration, mechanical shock, and electromagnetic interference (EMI). To function cooperatively, some type of connector is required so that when two printed circuit boards are brought into electrical contact with one another, the boards function as a single board when inserted into a backplane board or other module of a larger electronic piece of equipment.
Other conventional connectors include a two-piece connector using so-called flex circuits extending from the printed circuit boards. These flex circuits must be soldered to the printed circuit board. While the flex circuits may provide easier access for the soldering, problems with alignment still exist. In addition, the flex circuit has long tails that act like antennae, which tails create interference and limit performance as described above. In addition other conventional connectors provide little or no shielding from adjacent wires, resulting in cross talk and decreased data transfer speed.
What is needed is a way to terminate a printed circuit board or other circuit for connecting to a backplane board that avoids problems in mismatched impedance, alignment, cross talk and maintains a high-speed electrical signal connection between printed circuit boards in rugged, extreme environmental conditions.